The present invention relates to a sewing machine for the controlled sewing of a tape onto a tubular edge region of a workpiece.
A sewing machine is known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,635,575. In this sewing machine, rubber or elastic tape is supplied and is controlled by means of a friction brake, to form an endless, elastic band, even following cutting and release from the feed device, and thus even the trailing end portion of the rubber tape can be kept under a predetermined tension up to completion of the sewing operation and can be fed to the presser foot of the sewing machine It is, however, necessary to guide and align the tubular edge region of the workpiece by hand in order to achieve precise sewing of the rubber or elastic tape onto the tubular edge region of the workpiece. This guiding and alignment operation requires a high level of concentration on the part of the sewing machine operator. When the concentration level drops, the workpiece is guided and aligned less precisely, and the result is a reduction in quality which requires the sewn-on band to be undone or leads to a reduction in the value of the workpiece.